Having heard it on Lounge-Radio.com I downloaded Valley of the Dolls yesterday evening, by MYLO, on amazon.com, as the apple shop did not have it. Lounge radio is my favorite internet lounge station, and to use their motto: “This is how I lounge”.

While listening to the piece and a few others, I booked my flight to LA with Valentines discount on ebookers.ch, got my rental car there, my hotel for the first night in LA on booking.com, at the place where I am always staying, and the campsite for a few days afterwards; there where I really like to stay in Joshua Tree, booked at recreation.gov. Afterwards I continued painting on the ipad a bit.

Besides the fact that I will have the chance – insha’ Allah!- to hike somewhen in April in Joshua Tree again (hurray!), I simply find the way we can shop these days amazing. That’s why I mentioned what I bought. Put this in context with the first flight I bought when I was twenty years old: The cheapest fare from Zurich to Miami almost 30 years ago was first by train to Brussels, not included, and then with Sabena from Brussels to Miami for a killing rate of 1380 Francs. Thus, a lot has changed. And I am sure that the way we can shop and compare prices has changed the prices, too.

In perfumery (yes, this still IS a perfumery blog) it is not comparable yet but it is going to be. I am convinced. Even for niche, for artisanal niche. Actually, I wonder why it is not yet like on lounge-radio: you hear a (niche studio) song, click a buy it! link and are on i-tunes where you click on a button and it is yours.

This is what I want: I read a blog. Any perfume blog. About a perfume, like air du désert marocain. I click a link, I am on “i-note” where I click a button and the sample is mine, shipped within 24 hours. And when I like the fragrance, I go on “i-note” where I get the full bottle. Yes, there is a difference, it is the bottle neck of all internet shopping: The shipment logistics. And perfume is not the easiest good to shop, and it is highly regulated. These days, the EU for instance makes sure that cosmetic products in the EU are the most regulated cosmetics products in the world.  And the postal system is not fully operational everywhere.

Contrary to an e-ticket and an mp3 download, perfumes come in boxes and glass bottles and can break. And the packaging is part of the experience.  I have a good example there: You know that I use a pentagonal box, made from tin, to pack my pentagonal fragrances? This box is pretty expensive to make, I have to pay licenses (a looooong story), it uses a lot of space and is very sensitive to dents and to pressure.  It is expensive, not easy to pack and it sometimes arrives with dents. Not ideal for “i-note”.

In the end this is not dramatic, as the box is only packaging material. But looking at it all: Time to change this. Yesterday, I finished the time plan for the redesign of my pentagonal packaging: Within a year we will see a new box for the pentagonal flacons. Today we start.

Today’s picture: a picture taken at Joshua Tree, fitting with today’s post, at the art installation that I described in an earlier post on my blog here.